A network on the brink

Sporting News, The, August 6, 2001 by Fritz Quindt

Remote controls sure don't get you where they used to. Remember how we used to click on The Weather Channel for weather recaps and forecasts? TNN for country music? MTV for music videos? TBS for the Atlanta Braves?

Did somebody say, "Remember when we used to click on ESPN for sports?"

At the networks July previews in Los Angeles, ESPN ponied up its Original Entertainment unit, which produced the award-winning SportsCentury, The Life and 2-Minute Drill and is busily manufacturing a new prime-time lineup: movies, soap operas, reality and game shows. Ruh-roh.

To diversify, the artists currently known as The Worldwide Leader In Sports are investing $25 million--or, what a single Sunday of NFL programming costs. "We're taking a risk, but we think it's necessary in this environment" says Mark Shapiro, Original's whiz-kid vice president, addressing declining ratings of same old, same old sports. "And we want to have some fun."

So get ready for World's Sexiest Athletes, an upcoming special counting down the top 10 male and female hotties determined by voting at ESPN's dot-com and magazine. More fun than HBO's Real Sex 47!

OK, you won't see ESPN's inaugural movie on Lifetime. A Season on the Brink, premieres during March Madness, though adapting the language in John Feinstein's 1986 book on Bob Knight might draw ESPN its first TV-MA rating.

A "soapumentary," The D League, is "24-hour surveillance" of players in the NBA's developmental league, even following them into bedrooms. (MTV's Real World has been there/done that.)

But only fanatics of NBC's Fear Factor could applaud ESPN's reality game shows. The Wild Onion is a 32-team race involving stunts such as climbing the Sears Tower. In the aptly titled Beg, Borrow and B.S., two teams start in New York without money or transportation and have 45 days to cross the country and complete "challenges" like catching a Florida marlin or riding USC's Trojan horse ... to win tickets to sporting events of their choice. (Survivor this ain't.)

It's bad enough to drive ESPN's core audience to Fox Sports Net's The Best Damn Sports Show, Period ... OK, nothing's that bad. Still, this B.S. belongs on ESPN3.

Lest you go vigilante and yank the coaxial out of the wall: ESPN vows no games or news will be pre-empted; the Original Entertainment wave won't hit till January, taking over the Sunday-night lineup; displaced shows will be relocated (Hockey Night In America moves to Wednesday), and Shapiro said nothing about Ricki Lake coming on as host for Up Close.

Because ESPN began as an acronym for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, it can't be indicted for abandoning its mission. But how soon they forget that the ultimate reason we surf to ESPN is for the cool buzz of SportsCenter and for real sports. Leave Jackass to MTV.